He motioned for them to stand up and turn round. He straightened Daniel’s coat.
‘No one sits down until His Majesty gives permission. No one says anything unless His Majesty addresses one of you. You reply briefly and clearly, using no curse words, of course, and do not sit with your legs crossed. If His Majesty laughs, it may be suitable to join in with a brief laugh, or rather a smile with a little sound. No improvisations are acceptable. Is that understood?’
‘Yes,’ said Sanna, curtsying.
‘No,’ said Daniel. ‘I want to die.’
‘His Majesty expects answers to his questions and no digressions. Is that understood?’
‘Yes,’ replied Sanna, and curtsied even deeper.
‘I want to die,’ said Daniel again.
They went down a narrow corridor, up some stairs and stopped before a double door.
‘His Majesty will receive you in the aft salon. It is proper to curtsy and bow at the exact moment when I close the doors.’
They went inside. The man with the grey beard, from the portrait on Alma and Edvin’s wall, sat leaning back in a chair upholstered in red. He had a cigar in his hand. Behind him stood the man who had given the King the handkerchief. Otherwise the room was empty. Sanna curtsied and Daniel bowed. He remembered what Kiko had once told him, about the kings in olden times — you were supposed to fall to the ground and place your neck under their feet as a sign of submission.
I’m standing before a king, thought Daniel. He is my last chance.
He took a few steps forward, threw himself prostrate on the floor and then grabbed one of the King’s patent-leather shoes and placed it on his neck. The King flew out of his chair and the man with the handkerchief nervously rang a bell. Daniel was instantly surrounded by men who seemed to have come in through the walls. They held him tight.
The King sat down again.
‘Careful,’ he said. ‘Let us take a cautious look at the Negro child. It is clear that the girl is less than intelligent, but the boy must have a remarkable tale to tell.’
They were allowed to sit on low stools of the same red fabric as the King’s chair. Sanna immediately began to weep. But she did it silently. It was only Daniel who noticed the tears running down her cheeks. Maybe it was because she was sorry, maybe now she realised that she should have let him sink into the deep where Be and Kiko were waiting. He understood, and yet he hated her.
‘What’s your name?’ asked the King.
‘My name is Daniel. I believe in God.’
The King regarded the smoke curling from his cigar.
‘A good answer. But it seems practised. Let me hear the story. About how you came here.’
Daniel told him. Maybe the King would understand how important it was for him to continue his journey. Sanna sat in silence, tugging at her dress. Now and then the King would ask a question, and Daniel tried to answer without losing the thread of his story.
When he was finished, the King looked at him for a long time. Daniel saw that his eyes were kind. But they didn’t see him. They looked past him, just like Father’s when he was thinking about something important.
‘A peculiar story,’ said the King. ‘But filled with good intentions. You ought to stay and live your life where you have ended up. You should forget the desert. And besides, it’s much too hot there.’
He nodded to the man with the handkerchief. The man in the gold livery who always stood in the background came closer.
The King stood up and held out two photographs. His name was written on them. The photograph was the same one that was on the wall at Alma and Edvin’s house. Sanna made a deep curtsy. Daniel took the photograph but dropped it on the floor. He bent down to pick it up thinking that somebody was going to punish him by hitting him on the head.
‘In truth, quite a remarkable dawn,’ said the King and left the room.
They were allowed to keep the clothes, and their wet ones were put in a sea bag. The boat with Hans Höjer’s dead body had already gone. Daniel noticed that two seamen were always at his side in case he tried to jump overboard again. But he had given up. They went down a ladder and then sailed to the shore. A wind had blown up over the Sound. They came to the city called Malmö. Sanna held the picture of the King tightly. Daniel did as he was told. A carriage was brought up, and the coachman was instructed where to go. When they were sitting in the carriage, Sanna leaned against him.
‘Now he won’t dare hit me any more,’ she said. ‘He won’t dare throw me down on the ground and stick it in. Not when I have a picture of the King.’
Daniel didn’t reply. Sanna had betrayed him. He could never forgive her for that.
Late that evening the carriage rolled into the yard. It was Sanna who had directed the coachman. Alma and Edvin came outside. Daniel said nothing. He went straight into the barn and lay down in the straw. Outside he could hear Sanna explaining, leaping from one word to another as if the words were a skipping rope. When she stopped, Daniel burrowed into the straw. He heard Alma and Edvin come in and sensed that Alma had squatted down by his side. She put her hand on his brow.
‘He’s hot again.’
‘How will we ever understand him?’ said Edvin.
‘Go now,’ said Alma. ‘I’ll sit here a while.’
Daniel pretended to be asleep. He breathed slowly and deeply.
‘What makes you so restless?’ said Alma. ‘How can we make sure that you won’t kill yourself with longing? How can a child carry around so much sorrow?’
The next day Daniel stayed silent. His coughing fits worsened. Dr Madsen came several times to examine him, but Daniel no longer answered any questions. He was mute. Afterwards Madsen had a long conversation with Alma and Edvin, talking in serious whispers. That evening Alma came to Daniel and asked him if he wanted to move back into the kitchen. They hadn’t found a new milkmaid to replace Vanja and he could have a better bed. His cough wouldn’t go away if he stayed out here with the animals.
Daniel could hear that she meant what she said. His cough had begun to crack him open inside.
Two weeks after his last attempt to return to the desert, Daniel woke up in the middle of the night. He was very hot. When he rubbed his hand across his forehead he could feel that he was sweating. It was Kiko who had woken him. He stood with his hand over his face to shield his eyes and laughed. He hadn’t said a word, but Daniel understood what he meant. He got up from his bed in the straw and searched for the tip of a scythe that the hired hand had broken off. Then he headed out into the night. He ran barefoot through the dark. The sky was clear, and he didn’t stop until he came to the church. He squatted down and coughed. When he touched his mouth with his hand he saw that there was blood.
Daniel picked a stone in the wall of the churchyard that was completely smooth. He carved an antelope into it. It was hard to do, and he made many mistakes. The legs were different lengths, the animal’s back much too straight. But the most important thing was the eye. He took great care to make it completely round.
Then he sat down to wait.
When the cough came he drew the index finger of his right hand across his lips and then dabbed the blood in the antelope’s eye. In the darkness he couldn’t see the colour, but he knew that the antelope’s eye would shine bright red in the daytime when the dawn came.
Chapter 28
Someone had seen him in the night.
By early morning the rumour had started to spread, and just after nine o’clock people began gathering at the churchyard wall. The wind was blowing hard that day and the rain came in heavy squalls. Hallén woke up with a sharp pain over one eye. He was lying in bed with a cold facecloth on his forehead when his serving woman came in and announced that people had begun gathering at the church and that someone had carved a picture on the churchyard wall. Hallén had long suspected that the serving woman was growing senile, but he got out of bed because she didn’t seem confused in her usual way. Something had happened or was happening at the church. Hallén pressed one fist against the pain above his eye and left the parsonage. As he walked towards the gate he could see the crowd by the west corner of the churchyard. Hallén wondered anxiously, and with some annoyance, whether a suicide might have chosen this unfortunate place to end his life. The thought was not unreasonable because the old belief that suicides should be buried outside the churchyard was still embraced by many of his parishioners. He grimaced at the pain above his eye and at the thought. If it was a suicide, he hoped that there wasn’t too much blood. He stopped, took a few deep breaths and tried to think of a glass of cognac. He always did this when something unpleasant awaited him. He had never been able to derive the same strength from the Holy Scriptures as he could from the thought of a glass of cognac.